Mentor
by Lyaksandra
Summary: John finds out there is more than one kind of love.


**MENTOR**

**Premise:** John Connor did not follow Catherine Weaver to the future, but the years he will have to wait for a reunion with Cameron are not empty, he has discovered another kind of love.

John has done everything in his power to be everything his mother was for him, and everything she was not. For his child, his adopted daughter.

Sometimes he watches her running around with the other children, squealing with glee, laughing, playing silly games. John can barely understand so much happiness when they are down here in these grim tunnels, and it fills his heart with warmth, with hope. He can almost forget the day she was found.

_A soldier came running to Connor as he stood at the top of a small hill; they had just successfully taken a Skynet factory located in a small city called Palmdale, the soldier's face though, showed anything but joy. Something had happened._

_They had found a lone survivor. A survivor beyond any expectation. A young girl that strived in a city infested by machines and was still alive. Well, the poor thing could barely be called alive in her current condition. She looked famished, covered in grim and dust, her hair a plaster of grease and dirt, the only place that looked relatively clean were tiny lines coming down her eyes. The girl had been crying, a lot._

_When she was brought to him, the soldiers had carried her as they found her, and she was still clutching something in her tiny hands. John pried it off her delicate fingers with the utmost care, and found a man's wallet. It was filled with pictures of her and two adults, her parents most likely. Then he had found the deal breaker, her elementary school ID. It had a clear photo of her, from a time before the end of the world, from a time when she was still happy, and clean. Her doe eyes, her thick chestnut waves of hair, and that puckered mouth. If he had any doubt of who the girl might be, it was dispelled when he looked at the name, printed in clear black lettering. It read: Allison Young._

_John knew, he recalled that day when Cameron seemed to slip away from his grasp, dancing to the very human serenade of facial expressions and voice nuances never seen in her before. She had called herself Allison. The little girl was no other than the human template used to create Cameron. But beyond that, the little girl meant a chance of saving another life sacrificed in the name of John Connor; she was his chance at redeeming himself for failing Cameron._

_In the passing of the years after she left to god knows when, he understood he had failed her, and that he was supposed to walk her through life. He had been too busy sticking his head up his rear, and now it was too late. Even if Cameron was to never be found though, he could at least honor her memory. Taking upon him the care and raising of the little Cameron doppelganger that lie on the grass close to his knee._

_First things first, they had to save her, whatever had been fueling the girl to hang onto dear life, was apparently running out. She was now closer to the other side than this one._

A small delicate hand on his shoulder, a sad sobbing voice. John Connor is abruptly brought back to the present by the cries of his daughter, who insistently pulls on his shirt.

"John, John!"

"What happened honey?"

"One of the big boys is bullying us!"

With a rough callous hand, John caresses his daughter's head, and tries to wipe away some of her tears.

His mother always pushed him to stand for himself. So he advises his daughter to walk back there and stand her ground, try to reason with the older boy, and he jokingly adds that if he will not understand, she should beat his ass. As he sees her walk away, shoulders still shaking from time to time with her sobs, John knows she will return to him a moment later, defeated. He will be there to comfort her, and he will have a talk with whoever is in charge of the other boy.

Allison has to learn to make a stand for herself, not depend on him or others. She has to learn that defeat is just as important as victory, perhaps even more. But she also has to learn that he has her back, that he will never allow her to fall all the way to the ground.

When his little girl takes more than a couple minutes to return, he worries. How big is his surprise that upon walking over to where the children are congregated, he finds an older kid retreating backwards, tears on his eyes and a hand covering a bloodied nose. His daughter is still crying, sobbing, but standing her ground with a posture she has most likely learned from him.

Her choked voice comes in fragments, but her wail is that of a warrior. "Go! Don't come back until you are ready to play nice!"

John Connor is some sort of messiah, the chosen one to lead them all towards victory against the machines. The savior of the human world. It has always been a burden, something he has to do because in times of peril someone has to make a stand. That someone is him. Hence it has never brought him any positive feeling, excepting accomplishment, but that one you can feel it when you win a game of basketball. This however, looking at his daughter standing there, banishing the enemy and giving it the chance of redemption at the same time, this swells his chest in a way he never thought possible. In a way he thought lost along with the woman he let go many years go.

A man who does not look at all like a Grand General. A dark figure that seems too tiny to mean anything is now bolstered with pride. If any of his soldiers saw the glow in his eyes when he picks up his daughter in a bone-crushing hug, they would really start believing he is some kind of godsend.

Allison's giggles echo in the tunnels, and John knows she will make a great warrior, but more than that, a great human being. He is going to train her to fight, but teach her to have an open heart. He is going to be for her everything Sarah Connor was to him, and everything Sarah Connor was not.

Maybe someday Skynet will try to come for her, just as it did in Cameron's time.

But until that day, it is going to be one hell of a dogfight.


End file.
